I used about 1.5 layers of POLLY-O WHOLE MILK MOZZ and about 3-4 slices of Provolone (from local store). If I could build this pizza over again, I would use just a tad less of cheese and a tad bit more of sauce.

I actually have the whole pizza (minus a slice) left over because I made it for my brother to take back to his apartment. Tomorow, I make one for my dad to take back to my mom. Depending on amount of left over ingredients, I will try to squeeze out one more final pizza for myself and that is all for a while! I enjoyed the pizza making experience have hooked several of my co-workers on the pizza making experience. I work in a military office and have several young junior airmen showing me their iPhone photos of the various pizzas they made over the weekend. It brings the office together.

I actually have the whole pizza (minus a slice) left over because I made it for my brother to take back to his apartment. Tomorow, I make one for my dad to take back to my mom. Depending on amount of left over ingredients, I will try to squeeze out one more final pizza for myself and that is all for a while! I enjoyed the pizza making experience have hooked several of my co-workers on the pizza making experience. I work in a military office and have several young junior airmen showing me their iPhone photos of the various pizzas they made over the weekend. It brings the office together.

Thanks all,

I too have become the pizza fanatic. After finding this site i was baking at least one pie/day for 3 months straight. Sometimes even 3 pies per day!

I plan to use uncooked bratwurst sausage this time (Johnsonville). I don't have a pizza stone. I plan to cook the pizza at about 430-450degrees for about 30mins or so.

Should I pre-cook the sausage or just place it on raw on the cheese in as thin a manhole cover as possible? Concerned about a soggy pizza.....thanks.

And BTB, I used polly-o for the cheese anad 6n1 for the sauce (with diced from Glen Muir).

A pizza stone is preferred if you have one, but it's not a dealbreaker. You can still get a great pizza without one.I usually preheat my oven to 500 degrees, then turn it down and bake between 450-475, but everyone's oven is different.Tomatoes are usually the main culprit for sogginess, so drain the 6-in1 tomatoes for 10-30 minutes before you use them.Raw sausage is best for deep dish. I would recommend using italian sausage over bratwurst, or you may not get the flavor you're looking for. Depending on your sausage, you may get a bit of grease accumulation as well, so yes, a thin or sparse layer is probably best.

Also, try to resist cutting into your pizza until 5-10 minutes after you remove it from the oven, so it can set-up a bit. That can help reduce the pizza sogginess a bit.

And then, of course, you can always employ some paper towels to soak up some of the grease/liquid if you see some puddling.

I am going to try you recipe. Your pizza looks great. How do you get the pie out of the pan in one piece?

Thanks, Pen. Extracting the deep dish pizza out of the pan can get a little tricky. You know, of course, that at Malnati's restaurants and other great classic Chicago deep dish pizzerias that they just cut right in the pan and serve it that way. But our good pans that we get for home use would get pretty damaged over time if we did that, but many home pizzamakers just use the shiny, silver-like pans and cut their deep dish pizzas right in them. I prefer to extract the pizza out of the pan, tho, rather than damaging a good coated pan.

I generally don't have much of a problem with my 6" to 9" pans. 10" to 12" pans get a little trickier, but I've gotten pretty good at it. 14" pans - the largest size I bake in -- present the biggest challenge of all. Advise to get several different kinds of spatulas. I first use a "frosting" spatula to move all around the pizza to loosen it from the pan (in case it gets stuck somehow in the baking cycle, which often may happen). Then I use another spatula, the size of which depends on the size of the pan. For 12" to 14" I would most often use a "pancake" size spatula -- often first using a medium size spatula to gently pick up the pizza in the pan to insert the larger pancake spatula under the crust. Since I'm right handed, I would hold the pan in my left hand (either with a pan gripper or oven glove), get a spatula under the baked pizza, tilt the pan a little over a cutting board, and slide the whole pizza off onto the cutting board.

I know there are some videos out there showing Malnati's employees throwing the pizza up in the air slightly, then pulling the pan out of the way and letting the pizza drop onto a piece of cardboard or what-not, but I have not mastered that risky technique. If others have any suggestions, please feel free to add your thoughts.

BTBGreetings sir. Its been a while and I am about to put together a dough and need a little help. I am a little confused on the ADY and on how you put it together. Do you take a portion of the water from the dough calc., heat that up, and add your ADY to that to proof? I seem to remember the last time I made the dough, I added some of the sugar to the water and proofed the ADY that way. It seemed to come out ok but I am curious if the way you described doing it does something different. Can you please run back through how you proof ADY?

Hey Paul 3, you are very polite and respectful, but you can forget the sir on this website. Yes, I do take a portion of the water from the dough calculation and put it into a shot glass, warm the water slightly in the microwave to approx. 100 to 110 degree F (I use a thermometer to "roughly" verify that -- too hot may kill the yeast -- but it cools off fast), then to the shot glass portion I add the fractional estimate of the ADY (usually in fractions of a teaspoon and don't worry about being exactly accurate) into the warmed water, mix it up with the rod base of the thermometer, and set my timer for 10 minutes. The yeast in the shot glass must then show that it has fermented and foamed up. Otherwise, throw it away and get some more yeast packages (rarely that happens, but sometimes . . . ).

I used to add a pinch of sugar, but haven't done so in recent times. Some think it helps, but I hadn't found it to do much, but wouldn't discourage it. And if you are going to use "same day" dough, just skip the refrigerator entirely and leave it on a warm part of the counter and let the dough rise once or twice (and only if time, a third time), but it's somewhat relative. As you know, many of us have made some great deep dish pizzas in the "same day" dough mode.

One tip back on the water, use either slightly more than the recipe calls for (like4.2 oz rather then 4 oz) or if using a measured glass with the ounces indicated, wet it first and pour it out because some of the water (or oil) remains behind and doesn't really get into the dough mixture much.

Below to show what I meant about the shot glass use. After using it for the ADY, I . . . ah . . . wash it out in hot soapy water and a further rinse. Then I often am inclined to add maybe a little scotch afterwards to best clean the . . . eh . . . glass (hic!). The scotch somehow magically disappears.

I apologize for not remembering my source on this but I am pretty sure that Malnati's and other deep dish joints use Tin Plated Steel pans. I'm going to Burt's next week for my birthday, so I can ask the man himself what he uses (if I get the chance!). He has up to 18 or 20" deep dish pans. But you shouldn't go larger than 12" on a deep dish if you want the crust to stay in optimal shape due to moisture.

Since I have a Malnati's 2 minutes from my house, Pequod's, Burt's, Pizano's, and a Gino's East 15-20 minutes away, I must confess that I don't bother making deep dish at home. All your pictures look great, and I get excited to try your recipes, but why bother, when I have the real thing? I assume most of you live elsewhere, which is why you have no other choice. But I have no idea because so many of you don't list where you live.

This is just to further illustrate what I mean about the pizza being "full" of ingredients above. The picture below is from Malnati's website. Note especially how tall the edge or rim is over the contents of the ingredients in the middle of the pizza. I think Skunker's example was overly "full" of whatever contents there were, . . . or the edge of the crust wasn't pushed up high enough . . . or the pan was not a very high one. Suggest a traditional 2" deep pan. Just a thought as we're all looking for getting the best out of our pizzamaking, right?

--BTB Add -- the pizza crusts served at Malnati's great restaurants are usually always darker or browner than those illustrated on their websites and marketing literature. I guess the lighter crust color is presumed to be better for marketing purposes, but I assure you that a little browner coloring is most highly desired.

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this BTB. I have gone through stretches where I've eaten Malnati's every week for months and the crust is never that dark. It's almost always light in color like the pictures on their site. You know I ain't making this up because my Deep Dish Dough Malnati's loyalty card looks really beat up! Sure there can be times when it's darker, but not that much. It's usually on the light side.

Giving this another go later today around lunchtime. I've been craving some Lous. Dough has been in the fridge for about 18 hours and i got my hands on some Lou's tomatoes and can't wait to give them a try. I'll be sure to post some pics.

Here are the pics as promised. My previous attempt was with the 20% Semolina and it was cooked directly on a preheated stone at 450 for 23mins. For my next attempt I went with a 9 inch with 25% semolina, w/melted butter. Put in fridge for 24hours straight from the mixing bowl. I cooked it directly on the 2nd rack from the bottom at 435F for 32mins (did not use convection). It was outstanding.

However I had a few issues though with the crust and wanted to see if BTB could chime in. My finished crust had a crumbly (or overly flaky?)/sandy feel to it. Is this because of the high Semolina content? Don't get me wrong it tasted excellent, it just seemed very fragile and was falling apart in certain places.

The top rim of the crust also sank down a little while baking so I will need to bring it up about another 1/4 inch for next time.

For cheese I used 75% Mozz (50/50 whole/part skim milk) and 25% prov. About 8oz in all (will go with 12oz next time) Parm on top.

The Lou Malnatis tomatoes were out of this world good. If I had known they were like the real deal i would have bought them months ago. I got 3 cans for only $5 too because of the expiration dates. I was a bit too heavy on the sauce and will go with only 10oz next time.

I can honestly say if I were blindfolded I would have a VERY HARD time differentiating which was the real Lous. It was that damn good!

Pythonic, the pictures of your pizza looked absolutely delicious and I would have loved to dive into a piece of two of it. A little "flaky" is often thought of as highly desirable, but too crumbly probably would not. I've never made one that was crumbly as you described and as one or two photos seem to show. And it should not tend to fall apart a little as you described. In any event, your pizza stilled looked great. I love that texture in a way.

Let me think out loud a bit regarding the crumble question. It could be because it is too dry with either not enough water or oil. It could be because of too high a protein flour (which would absorb the hydration more and make it drier). It possibly could be that it was not mixed enough and too much flour remained unincorporated (even tho the "mixing" time should be short, like just 30 or 60 seconds). Hope it wasn't too much bench flour. Melted butter? Probably not, as it adds some water to the mixture. I'm finding using very softened butter added at the last point with just slightly incorporating the butter really does a nice job, but melted is fine, too. (I know Malnati's uses melted, but in the home oven environment we have to do things a little differently).

My target for semolina is 20% but so many have reported back to me that they love a level of from 25 to 50%. If your brand or bag of semolina is too coarse you may want to try putting some through the food processor a bit to make it a little more finer, but usually most brands are good as is. And I trust you let the dough get up to room temperature after taking it out of the refrigerator.

The top rim of the crust usually does shrink down a bit during its bake, so I most often try to make the crust edge crimped as high as I can in the pan (even to the top). And even increase the recipe a little -- sometimes adding a 5 or 6% bowl residue factor so I have enough dough to tightly "press, crimp and pinch" the dough up the sides of the pan. BTW, your pictures showed that you did an outstanding job on crimping the edge of the pizza against the sides of the pan. That's the way true Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza is meant to be. And it does taste much better that way.

The cheeses that you used sounded very good. I would guess around 10 or 11 ounces for a 9" pizza is about right, but others like more or less. And of the several groups of taste testers that I have, about half love a lot of crushed tomatoes and the other half would prefer a lesser amount, so it depends so much on preference. Of the incredibly large number of times that I've eaten at Malnati's home restaurant there in Lincolnwood, they always have a large amount of their great crushed tomatoes on top of their delicious pizzas. Some of their other restaurants, however, do things a little differently. I still have several cans of those great Malnati's tomatoes and consider them, too, to be among the best in the business.

Again, I am just super impressed with your pictures and can't help but believe it tasted every bit as good as it looks. Thanks for sharing your experience and pizza success with us.

--BTB

Edit - Just had an after thought. Are you proportionately calculating separately with the pizza calculation tool the amount of AP flour and the semolina flour? You should not use the semolina ingredient space in the deep-dish pizza dough calculator, but instead just calculate the proportions of the flour ingredient.

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this BTB. I have gone through stretches where I've eaten Malnati's every week for months and the crust is never that dark. It's almost always light in color like the pictures on their site. It's usually on the light side.

I respectfully disagree with you too, Rich, but since our starting points are different, it's of no importance anyway. I used to lunch and dine at the home of Lou Malnati's original restaurant in Lincolnwood while he was still living. I made special effort to get to his restaurant as I was a great lover of Due's pizzas at which he was a major contributor and just had to follow his great "brand" to his first restaurant. I worked just a few miles from the original Lincolnwood Malnati's "starship" pizzeria and ate lunch and dinner there at least 3 to 4 times a month for 30 years or more. It would be a rare time, indeed, for me and my co-pizza lovers to receive a light, golden colored crusted pizza, not that such would be bad, but . . . just unusual in "my experience." It seems common place to you as you expressed, I know.

I shared my experience earlier at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,8921.msg77312.html#msg77312. Can you share your photos with us? And I was often a customer at the Elk Grove Village, Buffalo Grove, Wells St. and close-in Lincoln Avenue Malnati's restaurants for many years, too. Somewhere on this site are many pictures of the great pizzas that I enjoyed at those restaurants. And rarely were they the light colored crusts that you experienced and that you believe were common place there. Not so in my experience is all I'm saying.

Like the "leopard" black spots on many of the great Neoplitan pizzas, the partially dark or black spots are often the most desirable of the pieces of pizza. In a way, that's how many of us Malnati's and Chicago Style deep dish pizza enthusiasts feel about it. But either way, we all love it, right?

Last time at the Buffalo Grove location, here is one photo taken with a flash showing a not so light a crust color. (A Malnati's fan will definitely recognize the plate, right?)

My previous attempt on post #471 yielded a more "stable" crust but the flavor on this attempt far outweighted the last. Im thinking it was under kneaded (even with the short knead times) and that caused the crumbling. I made another batch today and it was kneaded properly this time. I also went with the 2hr oven rise then into the fridge.

Regarding bake temp and bake times can you please fill us in on why you decreased your temp and went with a longer bake?